The drive for AI, the desire for humanoid labor & by extension the demand for sexbots lays bare the modern status obsessed capitalist desire for what they can convince themselves is an ethical form of exploitation. It’s proven by the quest to simulate intelligence. The stimulus of abuse is crucial.

Tag! The Jurisdiction Game - Trailer Info: civprogame.my.canva.site Crowd Sale, Aug 2–31: www.thegamecrafter.com/crowdsale/ta...

Tag! the Jurisdiction Game – Trailer

YouTube video by Richard Heppner Jr

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Civ Pro professors, don't forget to order your copy by the end of the month!

"Wait, there's not a trans woman playing in the WNBA?" -- me, a non-sports fan who has subliminally been noticing some headlines, upon reading this post

Nicholas Grossman@nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 5h ago

"If you came across these headlines as a non-sports fan, it would probably be fair for you to assume that there's a trans woman playing in the WNBA, or at least one at a high level in college." Well said, @laurentheisen.bsky.social. Numerically a nonissue, but manufactured for politics and bigotry.

I'm still not over my alleged "university" limiting course reserves to five "titles" per course.

Yes, in retrospect, incorporating labor and environmental protections into those agreements would have been a terrible idea. Which is what the protests were about.

Aaron van Dorn@aaronvandorn.bsky.social · yesterday

Hard borders for people, no borders for capital--working well for certain values of "pretty much everyone."

Aaron van Dorn@aaronvandorn.bsky.social · yesterday

We built a free trade network with the world, it was hugely successful and raised the standard of living for pretty much everyone involved, and people have noticed that Trump has destroyed it.

This is a laughably phrased question. In today's political context, you might as well ask, "Which do you like better, Trump's tariffs or Canada?"

Joey Politano🏳️‍🌈@josephpolitano.bsky.social · yesterday

DSA-aligned Democrats are now the most pro-free-trade voting bloc in the United States, in an incredible turn of events www.theargumentmag.com/p/who-suppor...

Using an "AI" chatbot in your campaign is per se disqualifying, but I'm a card-carrying feminist theorist and I can't for the life of me figure out what's supposedly misogynist about this.

Caræsten 🇵🇸@cara.city · 2d ago

Scott Wiener is so fucking creepy!!! making an AI chatbot of your woman opponent so she says all the things your campaign wants her to say is deeply misogynistic!!! holy shit!!!

An important lesson here is that administrators stand *outside of* and *opposed to* the university, which is a set of relationships between scholars and students.

Matt Gabriele@profgabriele.com · 2d ago

The university was made by solidarity between faculty and students against outside political pressure. We can remake it and must www.cnn.com/2024/04/30/o...

I'm starting to suspect that my tax dollars are going to munitions I'll never use, either

USA TODAY Opinion@usatodayopinion.usatoday.com · 2d ago

Opinion: Mamdani's idea may sound appealing, but it's NYC taxpayers who will take the hit, subsidizing discounts they may never even use.

Smart decision.

Denny Carter@dennycarter.bsky.social · 2d ago

heard an interview recently with an anonmyous wall street bro who said his employer would not subscribe to the president's truth social insider trading scheme because they did not want to go to prison when the rule of law returns

"The idea of society may sound appealing, but it's old men who will take the hit, planting trees under whose shade they might never sit."

USA TODAY Opinion@usatodayopinion.usatoday.com · 2d ago

Opinion: Mamdani's idea may sound appealing, but it's NYC taxpayers who will take the hit, subsidizing discounts they may never even use.

"Prove to the robot that you are human" tests should let you click an option for "I'm on my phone and don't have my reading glasses."

I think it’s hard to argue either that lockdowns were bad policy or that learning loss wasn’t real. We just have a society that makes no allowances for emergencies and affords no chance of making up. A lot of people are very mad about the effects of that without having any inclination to change it.

My brain keeps glitching back to the 1990s ... I read this opening and thought it was the counter-example to the problem in the article. "Oh, that's so healthy," I thought. "She picks up the phone and calls a friend." (From the Atlantic article on "How AI Could Make People More Anxious")

It sounds like they're just feeding houses to the fire ...

Glonzo the Bureaucrat 🇬🇱 🌹@snarkranger.bsky.social · 3d ago

Suburban sprawl in the West is having a reckoning. What we are learning is that half-city, half-wild is a recipe for conflagration. You have to either build a city, or not a city at all. Otherwise you're just providing the fire a new fuel type.

For the millionth time… CHILDREN THAT NEEDED SCHOOLS FOR FOOD, SHELTER, SAFETY, ALSO NEEDED TO BE KEPT SAFE FROM DISEASE. It was never one thing or another. We should have worked a lot harder to make schools a lot safer much earlier on.

The first mistake is letting them call themselves "leaders" rather than "administrators."

Chicago Sun-Times@chicago.suntimes.com · 5d ago

University officials say finances have taken a hit from declines in research funding and foreign student enrollment. Faculty say leaders’ slow response and lack of transparency have deepened the crisis.

Trump 2 has shown that the bulk of federal, state, and local "law enforcement" don't perform any useful functions at all. If they did, it would not be so easy to re-task them to brainless gestapo work like rounding up whole neighborhoods and waiting outside public buildings.

Melissa Gira Grant@melissagiragrant.com · 6d ago

I wrote about how immigration arrests are at all-time highs, even as ICE is trying to assume a lower public profile. How are they doing this? Look to your local police.

This decision arguably misreads Calder, ignores the special weirdness of PJ for defamation, and ignores Ford Motor's revision of Bristol-Myers Squib. The defendant's brief egregiously misrepresents Ford. I could defend this outcome, but it isn't some kind of self-own by Patel's lawyers.

Balls & Strikes@ballsandstrikes.org · 6d ago

If you're a law student and you miss the first Civil Procedure lecture, this is what happens to you years later

My spouse was good friends w/ our older neighbor whose grandfather, the town baker, built our house. Our neighbor described the most expensive neighborhood in town as "where the rich professors lived" when he was growing up. Today, entry-level *law* faculty have trouble even living in town.

Drug Monkey@drugmonkey.bsky.social · last wk.

I really hope someone checks my math and memory of public university starting salaries. The idea that inflation adjusted numbers reflect starting assistant professors making 20% less now than they did 25 years ago is….. whew.

"Go comment at your local government meeting" is common advice given to people angry the many injustices they face on the ground. But local governments often treat the public with contempt, and set up as many obstacles as possible to reduce possibility of rooms full of people denouncing them...

I don't think people realize how embedded AI use already is in both the public service and the private sector. This signals perhaps the most massive enshittification of the knowledge economy in human history. Rather than innovation, it will be the death of innovation.

I don't know what will change things, but if no guardrails are put up in a generation we will be a dramatically dumber society. Which is hard to imagine given how fucking dumb we are right now.

Turned this rant into a blog post. davekarpf.beehiiv.com/p/the-data-c...

The data center backlash Is working. That's why the New York Times is so concerned.

I have a

davekarpf.beehiiv.com

Dave Karpf@davekarpf.bsky.social · last wk.

I'm reading the "environmentalists are wrong about data centers" piece from the NYT and ohmygoditssofuckingbad. Apparently, so long as you're punching left, they'll just let you say any goddamn thing you please... www.nytimes.com/2026/07/25/o...

If your response to the data center backlash is "oh no, those poor hyperscalers! People are using inexact data in their arguments against OpenAI and Grok. Everyone should just let them proceed with their buildouts and focus instead on PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY," then you're either a grifter or a mark.

🧵

Dave Karpf@davekarpf.bsky.social · last wk.

I'm reading the "environmentalists are wrong about data centers" piece from the NYT and ohmygoditssofuckingbad. Apparently, so long as you're punching left, they'll just let you say any goddamn thing you please... www.nytimes.com/2026/07/25/o...

Obviously, this isn't the only contributor, but making up stupid, Orwellian jargon like "safety signal" when you mean "danger sign" is not helping here. thebaffler.com/latest/there...